


Image Of A Town: Bravil

by Jenwryn



Category: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-21
Updated: 2007-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:07:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This one shot is a character study of Bravil, if I can say that. Not a terribly positive one, either. But the first time I saw Bravil, it was raining and miserable...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Image Of A Town: Bravil

He’d been in some poor places during his travels as a journeyman in the Fighter’s Guild. Small villages with a dilapidated look. Places like Hackdirt. Isolated hunting camps clinging in desperation to barren mountainsides. Ruins lost and forgotten in far-flung corners of the land. But this – this made everything else he’d ever seen pale in comparison. It was so unexpected that he simply came to a slow, stunned halt and let the never-ceasing, godsforsaken rain - oh, for how long had it been raining now? – beat down on him and stream into murky pools around his heavy boots.

Gods, it was the arse-end of the world.

Dark wood, stained almost black by the water soaked through its rough grain, had been used to construct the houses. Houses? These angular buildings, so unpleasant in his eyes, seemed to be more like boxes, or unadorned coffins, than houses. They were something slapped together by a bored giant, they were – ugly. Not a single thing of beauty in sight. Just wet, miserable poverty. He felt a sudden pang of homesickness for Anvil. Anvil, with it’s warm stone and, in spring, the blossoming of flowers beneath shady trees; Anvil, with the soft salt tang of sea air rolling in beneath the watchful eye of the lighthouse…

Oh, for home! Oh, for anything but this! This was dismal.

He glanced back the way he had come and for a moment, for a heart beat, for some incalculable length of time, while water streamed through his unruly hair and into his blinking eyes, he actually wondered if he wouldn’t prefer another night in the open. But then his stomach growled in low protest, and he shrugged slightly to himself – nodded at the gate guard who was just as wet and forlorn as he was (and who had started to look at him suspiciously) – and began to walk again. He pulled his mantle a little closer around his broad shoulders, it’s soaked wool like the weight of a dead man against his back. He passed between dripping buildings… Only to pause again as he found himself on the high bank of a sudden drop down to the rain-swollen river that rushed before him, inexplicably dividing the town in two. He shot a cynical glance at the half-rotten wooden that bridged it, and decided he wouldn’t put his gods to the test by crossing it…

Oh, what a town.

He’d only ended up here because he’d been told there was a cheap house for sale, only ended up here because he wanted a place to call his own, a place to leave his books, his manuscripts, the ornamental weapons he collected during his travels. Something more than just a bed in a Fighter’s Guild Hall someplace.

The rain poured down around him, cold and stinging and blurring his vision.

If the house was cheap, he still didn’t want it. Oblivion could take this damned town and its rain and its ugly soaked wood.

The traveller sneezed into his scraggly beard, and then went to find himself an inn and some mulled wine…


End file.
